from the can-only-assume-Snowden-received-a-cursory-examination dept

The government seems to have lost interest in finding anyone to hang for Snowden's all-access tour of the NSA's internal servers -- access that greatly aided in his absconding with a number of documents revealing the surprising extent of the agency's surveillance programs. It certainly still wants to hang Snowden -- literally, if some legislators get their way.

The DoJ announced on Wednesday that US Investigations Services (USIS) will give up a $30m (£19.14m) payment in exchange for settling charges that it violated the US False Claims Act by failing to properly screen applicants for government security clearances.

According to the DoJ, USIS failed to properly screen federal security clearance applicants and, in some cases, submitted incomplete background check reports to the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

The USIS wasn't simply mediocre. It was awful. Shortly after Snowden revealed himself as the source of the leaks, USIS was revealed to have riddled the government with security holes over most of the past decade. One contractor was caught interviewing dead people during background checks. Another singlehandedly submitted 1,600 falsified reports.

Then in January of last year, the revelations got even worse. The DOJ accused USIS of faking background checks on 665,000 federal employees -- something the DOJ understatedly called "taking shortcuts."

The USIS won't actually be paying this fine, however. It will instead work its debt off doing the DOJ's dishes doing the same thing it couldn't be trusted to do in the first place when it was still collecting a paycheck. Why this hasn't resulted in a permanent pink slip for the contractor is beyond me, but it does show the government's endless willingness to forgive… well, certain contractors.

from the packet-shenanigans dept

The FCC has fined yet another company for blocking user Wi-Fi access in order to drive customers to the company's own, ridiculously-expensive Wi-Fi options. According to an FCC announcement, regulators have fined Smart City Holdings, LLC $750,000 for blocking user access to Wi-Fi at a number of convention centers served by the company. More specifically, Smart City was caught using common technology that sends de-authorization packets to user devices, kicking them off of their own personal hotspots or tethered smartphones while in Smart City business locations.

This was done, says the FCC, so that users would have to use Smart City's own service, which according to this brochure for the Charlotte convention center (pdf), is provided at pricing that's downright comical. Smart City offers convention center exhibitors access to 24 hours of blisteringly-fast (1.5 Mbps) Wi-Fi for $80, three days of Wi-Fi for $160, or five days for $360. If you're just a conference center visitor your options get even slower, with the company providing 768 kbps Wi-Fi service for $13 per 24 hours.

Obviously most users would rather just use their own phone as a hotspot to avoid these charges, and the FCC reminds everyone that acting like a jackass and preventing this from happening to make additional money simply isn't ok:

"It is unacceptable for any company to charge consumers exorbitant fees to access the Internet while at the same time blocking them from using their own personal Wi-Fi hotspots to access the Internet,” said Travis LeBlanc, Chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau. “All companies who seek to use technologies that block FCC-approved Wi-Fi connections are on notice that such practices are patently unlawful."

This is the second time the FCC has had to step in and slap some wrists. The company fined Marriott $600,000 last year for the same thing, though Marriott was blocking local Wi-Fi to drive users to even more expensive, $1,000 per device Wi-Fi service. Marriott originally tried to fight the agency by arguing this was all done to protect the safety and security of their customers, but sheepishly backed off of the practice once they realized the court of public opinion was very clearly not on its side.

Like Marriott, Smart City apparently couldn't help itself, and felt it necessary to issue a bullshit statement pretending the practice was about network security:

"As recommended by the Department of Commerce and Department of Defense, we have occasionally used technologies made available by major equipment manufacturers to prevent wireless devices from significantly interfering with and disrupting the operations of neighboring exhibitors on our convention floors. This activity resulted in significantly less than one percent (1%) of all devices being deauthenticated and these same technologies are widely used by major convention centers across the globe as well as many federal agencies."

So yeah, uh, we weren't being anti-competitive asses, we were simply worried about network security (the irrelevant DOD reference is a nice touch though). Fortunately, Smart City's statement also makes it clear they see the futility of fighting the FCC on this issue:

"While we have strong legal arguments, we’ve determined that mounting a vigorous defense would ultimately prove too costly and too great a distraction for our leadership team. As a result, we’ve chosen to work cooperatively with the FCC, and we are pleased to have resolved this matter. We are eager to return our energies to providing leadership to our industry and delivering world-class services to our clients."

Yeah, it's probably a good idea to get back to what you do best: charging outrageous pricing for pathetically-slow Wi-Fi service.

from the tanks-for-nothing dept

So, hey, let's say you're an old guy in a tiny town in central Wisconsin. Old, like, seventy-five, let's say, and the tiny town is farm country where you have a twenty-acre plot of good old American heartland. Now, let's say that the municipality hasn't appreciated the fact that you've kept your tractors out on the land you own and even went so far as to get a judge to level thousands of dollars of fines on you for not putting your toys away, because that's apparently a thing that can happen. Now let's say you've been ignoring these civil fines for some time. Under those conditions, would you expect this to show up on your lawn?

Could you repeat that? I couldn't hear your answer over the sound of you crapping your pants...

Marathon County sheriff’s captain Greg Bean declined to answer multiple requests for comment, but told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the large police presence was called in because law enforcement officials expected they would have to seize large equipment.

See, this is our fault. I don't think any of us realized that SWAT teams moonlight as large-format moving companies. I always thought they were for things involving tactics more complicated than the tactics of getting a tractor onto the hitch of a Mack truck. But, hey, what do I know? I'm sure Mr. Bean isn't prone to saying super ridiculous stuff or anything. So how about that BearCat?

“I’ve been involved in about five standoff situations where, as soon as the MARV showed up, the person gives up,” Bean told the Journal Sentinel.

I don't think the fact that the BearCat makes your job super easy to do is the proper justification for its deployment. If it was, why bother with the BearCat? Why not just bring the perp's mother to the scene and threaten to put a bullet through her head if perp doesn't give up immediately. Sure, it would be wholly unethical and inappropriate, but I bet Bean could still use the quote above, so all's good, yes?

This is yet another obvious and gross misuse of tactical and/or military-grade equipment in a haphazard way. Hoeppner owes Stettin, his city of 2500 residents, $80,000 in fines for not keeping his property as clean as the city would like. In other words, he left his tractors out. As a result, he faced down a BearCat and a SWAT team, which then escorted him to the bank where he paid his fines and was escorted back out by SWAT. All of this because the authorities couldn't be bothered to come up with a creative way to get Hoeppner out of his house.

“I just don’t understand why a dollar and a half of postage on an envelope that I would have had to pick up at the Wausau post office wouldn’t have done the same thing as 24 officers and an armored vehicle,” Hoeppner told the Guardian. “The United States is not supposed to terrorize its hardworking people."

from the still-a-slap-on-the-wrist dept

The big telcos don't exactly have particularly good records protecting your privacy. And now the FCC has reached an agreement with Verizon to pay the largest ever fine to the FCC to settle a long-term practice of hiding the fact that customers could opt-out of having their private info shared with marketers. Even as the "largest" ever such fine, it's still pennies for Verizon at $7.4 million.

At issue was that Verizon is required to have either an opt-in system for sharing information on users with marketers or an opt-out system. But if they have an opt-out system, they have to clearly tell new customers that they can opt-out and how to do so. Not surprisingly, Verizon chose the "opt-out" method... and then conveniently left out the part where they tell customers they have the right to opt-out. And they did this for several years. To approximately two million customers. Oh, and to make matters worse, the company is required to let the FCC know of any violation within five business days of becoming aware of it. Verizon finally "noticed" it's own failure to tell people about the opt-out in September of 2012, but forgot to say anything to the FCC for... 126 days. That's a bit longer than five.

For many of its customers, Verizon has used an opt-out process, sending opt-out notices to customers either
as a message in their first bill or in a welcome letter. During its investigation, the Enforcement Bureau
learned that, beginning in 2006 and continuing for several years thereafter, Verizon failed to generate the
required opt-out notices to approximately two million customers, depriving them of their right to deny
Verizon permission to access or use their personal information for certain marketing purposes. Moreover, the
Enforcement Bureau learned that Verizon personnel failed to discover these problems until September 2012,
and the company failed to notify the FCC of these problems until January 18, 2013, 126 days later.
Under the terms of the Consent Decree the FCC announced today, Verizon must take significant steps to
improve how it protects the privacy rights of its customers. For example, Verizon will now include opt-out
notices on every bill, not just the first bill, and it will put systems in place to monitor and test its billing
systems and opt-out notice process to ensure that customers are receiving proper notices of their privacy
rights. Any problems detected that are more than an anomaly must be reported to the Commission within five
business days, and any noncompliance must be reported as well.

To resolve the matter, Verizon will pay $7.4 million to the U.S. Treasury, which is the largest such payment
in FCC history for settling an investigation related solely to the privacy of telephone customers’ personal
information.

The fine is a slap on the wrist, but this once again suggests the rather cavalier attitude the telcos have concerning privacy and the ways in which they clearly are not particularly concerned about obeying FCC regulations.

from the doing-the-math dept

A few weeks back, Verizon finally admitted what the press had reported for years (and which Verizon Wireless had denied for years): that it had erroneously charged 15 million customers $1.99/month fees for supposedly accessing data on their phones, even though many had specifically declined to allow data services on their phones. At the time, Verizon Wireless said it would pay back "up to $90 million." The FCC noted that it wasn't satisfied with this response, and now it's come out that Verizon Wireless will also pay a $25 million fine to the federal government over these actions. That's separate from paying back customers, but the amount Verizon Wireless will have to pay seems to be shrinking. The original report was "up to" $90 million, but now people are saying "a minimum" of $50 million in refunds. So, it's still possible it'll pay $90 million in refunds, but it seems unlikely.

Of course, as Broadband Reports points out, something in the math doesn't make sense. This apparently went on for 2 to 3 years and impacted 15 million customers. While not every customer was charged the fee every month, many claim they did see it pretty much every month. So, start doing the math. Even if we assume that, say, one third of the users saw it every month for just one year and the rest saw it only once, we're already talking $90 million. But if it's true that many of them saw it for multiple years, and even if you throw in the $25 million fine, it sounds like Verizon Wireless could come out ahead in the end... Oh, and in case you were wondering, Karl Bode confirmed that no one at the FCC audited Verizon Wireless's estimates for how many people were charged this fee, so it's going on faith that Verizon Wireless -- who for years denied this fee existed -- is telling the truth about how many times it was charged.

from the tell-that-to-Jammie dept

While this probably isn't a huge surprise, given the fact that the Justice Department is stocked with former lawyers for the entertainment industry (and because it's filed similar briefs before), but it's still worth noting that the Justice Department has filed a brief in the Jammie Thomas lawsuit, in support of the constitutionality of the $1.92 million fine (and, no, none of the former RIAA lawyers are signatories to the brief, though you have to imagine their "expertise" was consulted). The reasoning is quite troubling and appears to include some serious revisionist history.

First, what's stunning is that the brief claims the awards are perfectly constitutional because it is not "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense [or] obviously unreasonable." Really? It seems that an awful lot of people find the idea of being forced to hand over $80,000 per song without any evidence that it was ever actually shared by anyone is severe and oppressive to the point that it's disproportionate to the offense and quite obviously unreasonable. I mean, this is a woman who wanted to listen to her favorite bands, and she now has to pay nearly $2 million. How can anyone claim that's not "severe and oppressive" in relation to the actual "harm" done?

Second, the brief claims that the damages should be much more than the $1.29 price per song found on iTunes, because it "ignores the potential multiplying effect of peer-to-peer file-sharing." Except, if that were the case, shouldn't the plaintiffs been required to show that these songs were actually shared? And should Thomas also be liable for the actions of anyone else she shared the songs with? That seems to go quite beyond what the law states.

Third, and perhaps most troubling, is the Justice Department's sneaky little claim that the statutory rates are obviously fair for file sharing, because they were put in place in 1999, with the explicit statement from Congress that these numbers were there because of internet file sharing. That sounds good, but ignores the fact that this little change in the law was pushed almost entirely by entertainment industry lobbyists (the same folks who now run the Justice Department!) to protect their dying business model, rather than through any empirical evidence. The real original purpose of statutory rates had nothing to do with punishing personal, non-commercial use, but were very much about dealing with commercial harm.

It's a neat, but immensely troubling, trick by the entertainment industry. Sneak through bizarre and totally unsupported legislation through a Congress that's never met a stronger copyright law it didn't love, using your high paid lobbyists. Then, get those same lobbyists appointed to the Justice Department to defend it against Constitutional challenges. Regulatory capture at its finest.

from the can't-stop-the-lying dept

This will come as a surprise to just about no one, but Jammie Thomas' lawyers have pointed out that the $1.92 million verdict against her is excessive, and is asking the judge to either throw out the award, lower it to the statutory minimum or grant a new trial. That was pretty much expected. What's odd, however, is the note at the very bottom of that article, concerning the filing that the RIAA made to the court. The RIAA keeps insisting that it just wants to settle the case, but if that's true, it seems weird to then attack Thomas in court again, but that's what the filing seems to do. It suggests that Thomas (despite this whole process) must still be sharing songs and that the court needs to issue an injunction barring her from doing so. While we've said that there appears to be ample evidence that Thomas used file sharing programs (and that she shouldn't have let this case go to trial), it would be quite surprising if anyone had any evidence that she was still doing this. As far as I know, the RIAA has not presented any such evidence at all. Demanding an injunction, then, seems quite strange.

On top of that, the RIAA appears to falsely claim (or the AP reporter misquoted the RIAA) that Thomas "distributed more than 1,700 songs to millions of others through the file-sharing system Kazaa." That may be true, but it certainly was not shown in court at all. The RIAA only named 24 songs she was charged with sharing, and then did not present any evidence that she actually shared any of them with anyone other than the RIAA's own investigators. The claim that she "distributed more than 1,700 songs to millions of others" was not proven at all, and in fact this entire new trial was because the judge originally made the mistake of assuming "making available" meant distribution. It does not. For the RIAA to misstate this point is really quite odd.

from the time-to-pull-back-the-attack-dogs dept

It's been interesting to see the aftermath of the Jammie Thomas $1.92 million ruling, as it appears that even the RIAA is recognizing that such an insanely large award gives them something of a black-eye and has the possibility of creating a bit of a backlash. However, apparently they forgot to send out that message to all of their usual attack dogs. In an AP article discussing the ruling and the $1.92 million number with a variety of different people, the RIAA tried to distance itself from the number, specifically stating, "That was not our number, that was what 12 regular folks rendered." Uh, yeah, except that the RIAA has long used the statutory numbers in their arguments about the "risks" of file sharing.

Tom Sydnor, from the Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF), a loud and proud supporter of stronger copyright at every turn (and who is well funded by the RIAA labels), apparently missed the memo on playing down the number. He told the reporter that it was a perfectly reasonable number.

"Legally acquiring a license to give copies of a song to potentially millions of Kazaa users might well have cost $80,000 per song,"

Except... that's not even close to accurate. The record labels presented no proof that she gave the song to millions of users, and seem to totally ignore the fact that these songs were available from tons of other sources (either legally or illegally) for prices between nothing and $1. To claim that the record labels would literally consider an option to license a single user putting a song into a shared folder at $80,000 is simply ridiculous.

But, of course, it shows the mentality of those paid for by the RIAA. These are the same people who accuse Larry Lessig of being a communist by taking a few statements totally out of context, and then accuse universities of supporting terrorism by not violating students' privacy and handing over their details to the RIAA.

So, if the RIAA is really serious about playing down the size of the jury award, it might want to rein in Sydnor before he says much more. If you're looking for someone to get out a message by appearing as a caricature of the evil record labels, I don't think you could find any organization better than PFF. But, that's probably not what the RIAA needs right now, unless it really wants to give the folks on the fence even more reason to leap over to the side who recognizes just how much the labels have twisted, stretched and abused copyright law over the years, totally at odds with its constitutional prescription of promoting the progress of science. Defending a $1.92 million award to the record labels for 24 songs in a shared folder, with no evidence that a single one was actually shared, is not promoting the progress. It's promoting massive greed and regulatory capture at the expense of society.

from the seems-a-wee-bit-excessive,-no? dept

Like many others, when I first heard about the $1.9 million the jury awarded the record labels from Jammie Thomas in her trial, my initial question was how that could possibly be constitutional and not excessive. However, given the immediate talk of settlements, I figured that question is unlikely to be asked in a courtroom. The EFF, however, has taken a look at the specific constitutional issues and how any appeal might be organized. There are two specific potential problems. First, the award is clearly designed to be punitive, rather than remunerative:

First, the Supreme Court has made it clear that "grossly excessive" punitive damage awards (e.g., $2 million award against BMW for selling a repainted BMW as "new") violate the Due Process clause of the U.S. Constitution. In evaluating whether an award "grossly excessive," courts evaluate three criteria: 1) the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant's actions, 2) the disparity between the harm to the plaintiff and the punitive award, and 3) the similarity or difference between the punitive award and civil penalties authorized or imposed in comparable situations. Does a $1.92 million award for sharing 24 songs cross the line into "grossly excessive"? And do these Due Process limitations apply differently to statutory damages than to punitive damages? These are questions that the court will have to decide if the issue is raised by Ms. Thomas-Rasset's attorneys.

The second issue questions whether the court has the right to try to use Jammie Thomas as an examples to warn off others (something the RIAA has been pushing for throughout this entire show-trial of a case):

Second, recent Supreme Court rulings suggest that a jury may not award statutory damages for the express or implicit purpose of deterring other infringers who are not parties in the case before the court. In other words, the award should be aimed at deterring this defendant, not giving the plaintiff a windfall in order to send a message to others who might be tempted to infringe. It's hard to know without having been in the courtroom, but if the record industry lawyers urged the jury to "send a message" to the millions of other American file-sharers out there, they may have crossed the constitutional line.

Interesting stuff, should Thomas decide to push forward. The downside, however, is that for whatever reason, to date the Supreme Court seems to throw normal precedent out the window when it comes to copyright law. I was just reading a long study (more on that later) of how a series of recent Supreme Court rulings on copyright seem to simply ignore precedent and simply accept the myth of copyright's importance over all else.

from the bad-bad-idea dept

Last month, we noted that it was a really bad idea for Jammie Thomas not to settle her lawsuit with the recording industry. There was simply way too much evidence for a jury not to convict her. The trial itself was, again as expected, something of a circus, rather than anything interesting or compelling. So, it should come as no surprise that, yet again, Thomas has been found guilty. But what is surprising is that the the jury chose to fine her $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song. That's $1.7 million more than the original trial. $80,000 per song! Still, it was a really bad idea for Thomas to go through with this suit as there was way too much evidence linking her to the music (and too many problems with her own testimony). Now the RIAA is handed a gift. A verdict that it can gloat about and misrepresent to its own advantages. What might be interesting is whether (for all the RIAA gloating) this ruling has a similar impact as The Pirate Bay victory had in Sweden -- galvanizing people to support the Pirate Party. Somehow, the story isn't quite as compelling though.